Matt Whitaker in 2014. That year he finished fourth in a Republican primary for United States Senate.
Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/AP

The new acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, is a longtime critic of the Mueller investigation and is a former Republican candidate.

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Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the 49-year-old Iowan would serve as Jeff Sessions’s temporary replacement after Trump pushed Sessions out as attorney general.

Whitaker currently serves as Sessions’s chief of staff.

Before joining the Department of Justice in September 2017, Whitaker was a lawyer in private practice in his home town of Des Moines and led a DC-based conservative group, the Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust (Fact), that was particularly focused on scrutinizing Hillary Clinton.

In that role, he said that he suggested that Clinton should be prosecuted. Whitaker said in a May 2017 statement: “I believed there was a strong case to bring against [Clinton] and she should be extremely grateful that has not happened.”

Whitaker also wrote an op-ed for CNN in August, 2017 where he urged the department to limit the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He wrote that without strict boundaries the investigation could resemble “a mere witch hunt” and transform into “a political fishing expedition”.

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Almost immediately after his appointment was announced on Wednesday, the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, insisted Whitaker should recuse himself from any role overseeing the investigation. “Given his previous comments advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, Mr Whitaker should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general,” said Schumer.

A longtime Republican stalwart in Iowa, Whitaker served as United States attorney in the Hawkeye state under President George W Bush, a position to which the Senate confirmed him in 2004. He has also mounted two unsuccessful bids for statewide office. In 2002, he was the Republican party’s nominee for state treasurer and more recently, in 2014, he finished fourth in a Republican primary for United States Senate where he lost to the incumbent, Joni Ernst.

Ellen Carmichael, a veteran conservative operative who has worked with Whitaker in the past, described him glowingly to the Guardian. “During my time working with Matt, he was always smart, kind and down to earth. He loves his family and his home state of Iowa. And he always championed ethics and good government as head of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.”

Whitaker is a Des Moines native who played football at the University of Iowa, where he earned a law degree.